Forty Days of Musa Dagh (98 page)

 

 

"Gabriel Bagradian," he began, but could not keep his eyes on his opponent,
"feels everything as a militarist, as an officer. After all, no one can
reproach me with having run away in these last fights. But I don't feel as
a militarist. Things strike me differently. We all see things differently
from Bagradian, there's no getting away from that. Is there any object,
I ask myself, in spilling more blood in another unequal battle, merely
in order to be left to starve quietly for three days longer at most?
And even that would be an unheard-of bit of luck. What should we gain?"

 

 

Till that instant Aram's "way out" had still been the vaguest of
half-digested notions, without proper reality. His bitter urge to
contradict Bagradian suddenly gave shape to this nebulous project, made
it seem to him like a well-thought-out suggestion. "Ter Haigasun and all
the rest of you must admit that there's no point in our holding out up
here on the Damlayik; that we should do better to shoot our wives, and
then ourselves, than die slowly of hunger or fall into the hands of the
Turks. I therefore suggest that we leave the mountain, tomorrow or the
day after, as soon as possible. As to the best means of doing it, that
must all be carefully discussed. I would suggest that we go northwards,
though of course not on the heights, since those are barricaded by the
Turks, but along the coast. We might take Ras el-Khanzir as our first
objective. The little bay there is very sheltered and certainly has more
fish in it than the coast here. We shan't need a raft, and I give you
my word that the nets will be enough. . . ."

 

 

That sounded less fantastic than perhaps it was. Above all, Aram's speech
suggested action, and the vague, but compelling prospect of being able
before death to break through the mummification of the Damlayik. Heads,
which up to then had never moved, began to sway as though a faint wind
rippled them, faint color came into the faces.

 

 

Only Gabriel Bagradian had not changed as now he raised his hand for
permission to speak. "That's a very pretty dream of Pastor Aram's. I admit
that I've had similar dreams myself. But we must test fantasies closely
by the chances they have of becoming reality. I'll therefore -- though,
as responsible leader I have no right to -- assume that we succeed during
the night in getting past the Turks, and reaching Ras el-Khanzir. I'll
even go much further than that; I'll frivolously suppose that saptiehs
and soldiers fail to notice a long, straggling procession of four to five
thousand people, moving -- the moon's in her second quarter -- all along
the brightly illuminated chalk cliffs above the coast. Good! We reach the
sloping rocks of the cape unhindered. There we should have to get round a
long promontory, since the little bay only eats into the coast beyond the
cape. . . . Don't interrupt me, Pastor, you can rely on what I say, I have
every detail of the map in my head. I don't know whether these bays are
just bare rocks or whether they offer any kind of inhabitable ground. But,
even so, I'll give the pastor the benefit of the doubt. Well, therefore,
we find sufficient camping-ground, and the Turks are struck so blind
that they need six, or if you like eight, days to hunt us out. And now
comes the really important question: What shall we have gained? Answer:
We shall have exchanged the known for the unknown. We shall have exposed
our worn-out, famished women and children to a long, scrambling march,
over pitiless rocks, along the cliffs, which probably they could never
manage. Instead of this camp, to which we're accustomed, we should have
to build up another, without strength and without means. Surely everyone
sees that! Since we no longer have any mules, we've naturally had to leave
all our beds and rugs, all our cooking utensils, our tools, behind on
the Damlayik. But without tools, even if we found ourselves in Paradise,
with bread growing on every tree, we could never start a new life. The
pastor won't deny that. We relinquish a strong and tested fortress,
for which the Turks have the greatest respect. We exchange a dominant
position, on a height, for an exposed, helpless position in a valley,
where there is no cover. We should be slaughtered within half an hour,
Tomasian! We should of course have one great advantage. Down there we
should not have such a long way to fall into the sea as we shall up here,
from the Dish Terrace. But, anyway, I'm afraid the fish may get more to
eat off us than we're ever likely to get off them."

 

 

Aram Tomasian had listened to this clear exposé with occasional excited
interruptions. The voice of common sense, which even now warned him,
at this decisive moment, not to let himself he driven by blind emotion,
grew fainter and fainter. Nor, as he attacked Bagradian, so hotly that
he could scarcely control his voice, did he once look him in the face.
"Gabriel Bagradian is always so despotic in defending his own point
of view. He won't allow us to have any intelligence of our own. We're
nothing but a set of poor peasants. He's so far above us! Well, I
don't deny that that's so. We're poor peasants and craftsmen, not his
equals. But, since he's just asked us so many questions, may I ask
him
a few in exchange? He, a trained officer, has made the Damlayik into a
good fortress. Admitted! But what use is all this fortffication to us
today on the Damlayik? None at all! On the contrary. It prevents our
trying to find a last way of escape. If the Turks are intelligent, they
won't let themselves in for another battle, since they can gain their
object in a few days without losing a man. But whether or not there's
another battle -- where is there some idea, some new attempt to escape
death? I know it's not nearly so much trouble to perish here, in our usual
surroundings. At least one hasn't got to make any effort. Personally I
consider it despicable simply to sit down lazily and rot. And the most
important question of all: What suggestions has Gabriel Bagradian got
to make, to keep off hunger? Is it enough for him to jeer at my attempt
with the fishery? Unluckily it was, and re mains, the only attempt. If
I'd had support, if every able-bodied man hadn't been always drilling
all day long, it might have been rather more successful."

 

 

And the pastor, who so far had at least kept an appearance of calm, sprang
forward passionately and shouted: "Ter Haigasun, I'm making a very serious
suggestion. That all the still available animals be slaughtered, cooked,
and divided up. That we strike camp tomorrow night, or at the very latest
the night after. Re-encampment in one of the bays, where fishing is easy!"

 

 

The quick, gruff method of this suggestion confused these peasants'
heavy minds. The mukhtars shifted uneasily on their benches, rocking
from side to side, like praying Moslems. Old Tomasian, Aram's father,
blinked in alarm.

 

 

But Kebussyan wiped his perspiring baldness and uttered a piteous complaint;
"Oh, if only we'd gone on the convoy! . . . Alive or dead. . . we'd have
done far better!"

 

 

Here Ter Haigasun drew a crumpled filthy slip out of his cassock sleeve.
This was his chance, not only to stffle Kebussyan's sigh, but to defend
the Damlayik against Aram. He read out his fateful slip in a fairly low
voice, almost tonelessly:

 

 

"'Harutiun Nokhudian, Pastor of Bitias, to the Chief Priest of the
coastal district round Suedia, Ter Haigasun of Yoghonoluk.

 

 

"'First, peace and long life to you, beloved brother in Christ,
Ter Haigasun, and to all my beloved countrymen along with you,
up on Musa Dagh, or wherever else this letter may find you, and,
let me hope, still on the mountain. If God wills, this letter will
reach you. I shall have given it to a well-disposed Turkish officer
to deliver. Our trust in God has been put to a terrible test, and He,
I am sure, would forgive us, had we lost it. I write you this beside
the unburied earthly remains of my dear, saintly, angelically kind
wife. She, as no doubt you will remember, always was concerned for
my health and well-being, and would never permit me to exert myself,
go out bareheaded, or take stimulants, to which my weak, sinful nature
was over inclined. But now everything is reversed. Her eager prayer has
been heard. It is she who has gone on and left me alone, having died
of hunger. Her last act was to force me, in the morning cold of these
steppes, to take her neck-scarf and wrap it round me. God punishes me,
like Job. I, the weak, the ailing, have a strength in me which refuses
to be extinguished, and which I have cursed a thousand times, But she,
who protected me on earth, has died, and I have to outlive her. All
the young men of my parish were separated off from us in Antakiya,
and we know nothing of what has happened to them. All the rest,
except twenty-seven, of us are dead, and I fear I shall be the last,
I who am not strong or worthy enough to die! Now we get a small daily
ration of bread and bulgur, because commissions have been in the camp,
but only enough to prolong our suffering. Perhaps today they will send
us inshaat taburi to bury all the many, many corpses. When they come,
they will take my dear one away from me, and yet I must be thankful
that they do it. I have covered this sheet. God keep you, Ter Haigasun,
when shall we ever meet again . . .'"

 

 

The priest had read even these last lines in a toneless, matter-of-fact
voice. Yet every syllable hung like a counterweight on the bearded faces
of the men, weighing them down.

 

 

Bedros Altouni raised his voice, as rusty and sharp as an old knife blade:
"Well, I think that now Thomas Kebussyan will have ceased to long for
the blessings of deportation. We've been living our own life here
thirty-eight days now. It's not been easy, but it's been quite decent,
in my opinion. Pity that later we shan't any of us get the chance to be
proud of it. I suggest that Ter Haigasun should publicly read Nokhudian's
letter from the altar square."

 

 

This was most heartily agreed upon. For in the Town Enclosure Kebussyan's
sigh, "Oh! if we'd gone on the convoy!" had long begun to go the rounds.
But Gabriel had paid no heed to all this, having sat there lost in his own
reflections. He had already heard the little pastor's letter. Now he was
thinking of Aram's emotional display of hostility. He knew at once that
Iskuhi was the cause. All the less, therefore, would he allow himself
to be touched by Aram's insulting tone. He had a very great proposal.
He strove, therefore, to make his words as conciliatory as possible:

 

 

"It's never occurred to me to gibe at Pastor Aram Tomasian's plans.
From the very beginning I've considered his suggestion for the fishery
a good one. If it's failed, that isn't the fault of the idea, but of
bad tools. As to his suggestion of a new camp, I was forced in duty to
show that it's not only unpractical, but that it would hasten the end and
make it crueller than ever. On the other hand, Pastor Aram was perfectly
right to ask me what I propose to do about famine. Now listen, please,
all of you! I'm going to answer all these questions at once. . . ."

 

 

In a sense Gabriel also was improvising, much as the pastor had. He, too,
had turned the proposal, which now he developed in all its details, over in
his mind in the night, as one among several possibilities, without taking
it really seriously. But so it is. Once an idea, a project, is put into
words, it is already in the first stage of reality, and has gained a
solidity of its own. He turned to Nurhan the Lion, to Shatakhian, to
those who, he hoped, would support him.

 

 

"There's an old method which the besieged have used from time immemorial.
. . . The Turks have shifted their camp on Musa Dagh. Even if they have
six or eight companies and Lord knows how many saptiehs, they'll need
most of these troops to enclose the mountain. We need only reckon how
big the distance is from Kebussiye to, say, Arsus. It's evident they
want to starve us and that therefore they'll wait a few days longer
before beginning their big attack. That's proved by this departure
of their general who's going to lead it. You see how important they
feel us! . . . I'm supposing that this general, with his officers,
the Kaimakam, and perhaps even other highly placed personages will come
back very soon and quarter themselves in my house. . . . So, therefore,
I want to attempt a sortie, you understand, Ter Haigasun? As follows:
We'll form an attacking party of picked decads. I don't know yet whether
it'll be four or five hundred men. By tonight I shall have thought out
the whole scheme in detail. There are plenty of ways, between gaps in
the fire, of getting down into the valley. They'll have to be exactly
reconnoitered. But I know for a fact that, down there, their command
has only posted patrols, who skim the valley during the night. We should
merely have to find out when they relieve each other, and get past when
their backs are turned; it wouldn't be hard. And at, say, two or three
in the morning we could attack. . . . What? . . . No, not Yoghonoluk, we
certainly shouldn't get as far as that. . . . We could attack my house,
with a fully superior strength. Naturally we should have found out the
number of men they have on guard there. Apart from officers orderlies,
I reckon at most on a company of infantry or saptiehs. We'll kill off
the sentries and take quick possession of the garden and stables. All
the rest is really not for discussion here. It's my business and
Chaush Nurhan's. With God's help we shall take prisoner the general,
the Kaimakam, the müdir, the yüs-bashi, and the other officers. If the
whole attack is successful, we can have those highly placed gentlemen
back in the Town Enclosure within two hours, and perhaps even flour
and provisions."